Toad
From Traditional Witchcraft Wiki Project
The common toad (bufo bufo) is widespread throughout Europe, with the exception of Ireland and some Mediterranean islands.
Adults can grow to 18 cm (7 in) and their skin has a warty appearance and ranges from green to brown. As a defense against predators they secrete a toxic, foul tasting substance called bufagin. This is enough to deter many predators although Grass Snakes and hedgehogs are immune. Although the adults spend most of their time on land the females enter ponds and other still waters to lay their eggs, toadspawn, which can be distinguished from the spawn of the common frog as it forms strings rather than a large mass of eggs. Eggs are laid in the spring, with the females attempting to return to the water in which they were born. The young tadpoles resemble other tadpoles in their appearance except that toadpoles have a larger, rounder blacker head and shorter tail.
Common Toads eat invertebrates such as insects, larvae, spiders, slugs and worms, which they catch on their sticky tongues. Larger toads may also take slow worms, small grass snakes and harvest mice, which are swallowed alive. Toads generally hunt at night, and are most active in wet weather.
Toads have a long association with European witchcraft, as familiars and ingredients in potions.
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Toads And Poison
Toads are often associated with poison, and its saliva was sometimes known as sweltered venom. Indeed, when a toad is molested it secrets or ejects poison that irritates the eyes and mucous membranes of many, but not all, of its predators. Dried toad poison has been used to treat various ailments in the past, and it is known that some species of toad poison can produce hallucinogenic effects in humans. Some witches extracted this poison for use in flying ointments. It is interesting to note that many hallucinogenic fungi are given the name toadstool, these also having ancient use in flying ointments.
Toads And The Devil
In Europe during the Middle Ages, the toad became linked to the Devil, whose coat of arms was said to feature three toads. In his book "Gypsy Sorcery & Fortune Telling", Charles Godfrey Leland claims that "in most Romany dialects there is the same word for a toad or frog, and the devil"; this word is Beng, which is not only used as a name for the Devil, but also means "frog-like".
Toads And Witchcraft
In early Christianity, the toad was considered as a common form for the witches Familiar & an agent of the Devil, probably on account of the fact they make their habitat in stagnant pools of water. In the witch trials at St. Osyth in England, Ursula Kempe's young son testified that one of her four familiars, a black toad named Pigin, had once caused illness in a young boy.
Charles Godfrey Leland (Gypsy Sorcery & Fortune Telling) recounts a story told to him by a Romany girl in Epping Forest, wherein a woman was dying after being bewitched by a woman who came to her every day in the form of a giant toad; the Romany gypsies removed the spell by catching the toad, tying some shears into the shape of a cross & throwing the lot into a fire, onto which was then thrown some salt. This same story is retold in a Romany poem found in "English Gypsy Songs" (Trübner and Co., 1875).
Toads were also a favourite shape for witches & gypsies to transform into. R. H. Stoddard, in a poem, recounts a tale wherein a man accidentally treads upon a toad, which kills it, and hearing a scream in the woods goes to investigate, only to find a gypsy camp wherein all were lamenting the sudden death of a child, whose corpse was mangled as though it had been trampled to death. This incident recalls the many other folkloric tales of witches who have been harmed whilst in the shape of hares and so forth, only for the damage to transfer to them in human shape. The same belief is also found in numerous superstitions that warn how great care must be taken to prevent harm coming to a toad when removing it from a house, so as not to incur the wrath of the witch to whom the familiar spirit belonged to.
In the Spanish Association of Witches in the year 1610, one witch of this Order claimed how during his admission when taking his degrees in this Order he was given a mark like a toad upon his eyelid, and that a real toad was given to him which had the power to make its master invisible, to transport him to distant places, and change him to the form of many kinds of animals. Similarly, Basque tradition held that witches were marked with the symbol of the toad's foot & in the Pyrenees, the image of a toad could be found in the left eye of the witch (see witch mark).
Toads In Magic
Toads & their various parts are much prized as a part of a witch's materia magica, especially in those relating to poisoning, venefice, cursing, malefic magic & necromancy. One common manner of working such malefic magic was to baptise the toad in the name of the enemy & then torture the toad to death on the basis that this would transfer to the enemy.
Toads also have affiliation with local village "gossips", due to their compulsive croaking. An object or taglock of the person was placed inside the toads mouth, sown up with a blunt needle and left to hop into the gossipers house to stop their own conpusive croaking i.e. gossiping, truth-twisting & so forth.
As an ingredient, toad saliva & excretion was often used in poisonous potions & philtres, which could be secretly given for ingestion or applied to the body. Furthermore, the toad's lungs were said to be an ideal way to murder a wayward husband. Yet the liver of the toad was believed to be an antidote to poisons.
Toads were also brewed into soups in order to gain control over the weather, and in 1662 the Aulderdane coven was said to have utilized toads during a prayer to call up the rain for the "fruit of the land".
Scottish folklore held that whoever carried a dried toad tongue over their breast would be successful in matters of love as they would be capable of bending any woman to their will. Toads have also been used as aphrodisiacs, as an aid to fertility & to cure impotence. One such piece of love magic called for a toad to be buried in an anthill, with the resultant skeleton powdered & mixed with bat blood & dried flies, before being baked into tiny buns, which should be added to the food of the one desired.
Toads have also been used by cunningmen to cure such sicknesses as the king's evil, scofula, and rheumatism. In Devonshire & Stalbridge, the hind leg of a dried toad was placed in a silk bag and worn around the patient's neck to cure the king's evil & scofula (see suspensions & alligations). For rheumatism, a toad was burned to powder and then placed in a silk bag and worn around the throat. In some instances, the diseased part of the patient was cut from the toad and the rest of the animal was buried. The part that was cut away is then wrapped in parchment and worn around the patient's neck. In Dorset an annual Toad Fair was held during the beginning of May by the local cunningman during which charms were sold against various illnesses.
The Toadstone
The toad was believed to hold a jewel within its skull called a toadstone, which was held to be capable of detecting the presence of poison, warning its owner by becoming warm to the touch, or if set into a ring it would become paler in color. It was also said to be an antidote to poison & bites, and capable of causing houses from burning & boats from sinking.
It was obtained by extracting it from the toads head or by causing it to vomit it out. One favoured method was to hang the toad in the chimney by its hind legs & catch what was expelled from its mouth in a dish of yellow wax. Francis Barrett in his book "The Magus" outlines the following method:
"Paracelsus and Helmont both agree, that in the toad, although so irreverent to the sight of man, and so noxious to the touch, and of such strong violent antipathy to the blood of man, I say, out of this hatred Divine Providence hath prepared us a remedy against manifold diseases most inimical to man's nature. The toad hath a natural aversion to man; and this scaled image, or idea of hatred, he carries in his head, eyes, and most powerfully throughout his whole body: now that the toad may be highly prepared for a sympathetic remedy against the plague or other disorders, such as the ague, falling sicknesses, and various others; and that the terror of us, and natural inbred hatred may the more strongly be imprinted and higher ascend in the toad, we must hang him up aloft in a chimney, by the legs, and set under him a dish of yellow wax, to receive whatsoever may come down, or fall from his mouth; let him hang in this position, in our sight, for three or four days, at least till he is dead; now we must not omit frequently to be present in sight of the animal so that his fears and inbred terror of us, with the ideas of strong hatred, may encrease even unto death. So you have a most powerful remedy in this one toad, for the curing of forty thousand persons infected with the pest or plague."
The Toadstone is an example of an animal concretion.
The Toad Bone
It was believed that if a person carried a toad bone they could gain power over animals and people.
The Toadmen
The Cambridgeshire Toadmen have perhaps the most extensive history with the toad as they continued their practices up until the 1930's. Like the order of the Horseman's Word, the Toadmen were said to have complete power over any horse. They acquired this power through an elaborate ritual which involved skinning a toad and then allowing the ants to eat the bones clean. The bones were then carried by the Toadman in his pocket until they dried. Then, on a full-moon night, he would take the bones and cast them into a stream of running water. The bones would then scream and one of them float upstream and leave the others. The Toadman would then quickly capture this bone and take it to either a graveyard or stable for three more nights. Then he would be subjected to a final tests where the Devil himself would attempt to make the man give up the bone. If the Toadman retained the bone he would be granted all of the powers that he had so diligently worked for.
